I think the hex-size and location-scaling issues stand out so much for me because my experiences with hex maps began with the SPI board wargames, where hex-placement of symbols and units was absolutely key, and that translated into the earliest RPG hex maps I worked with, those by Judges Guilds, where again the settlements were scaled into the hexes, with things like isolated strongholds and towers reduced to very simple, tiny, open squares and circles, so small it was often hard to find them quickly, which is perhaps pushing too far towards the other extreme!

For the village places that need to be in better communication, it would be possible to have them stay where they are, but introduce much more direct routes between them. This might mean redesigning other parts of the village to fit - reasonable, because the village would have grown up around such existing routes. If the houses had been there first, the important places would have been sited differently, to allow those more direct routes to be possible from the outset.

There's a fair chance the marketplace would have ended up more central too, as in reality, such things often started out on the Village Green, an open area in the middle of the village to allow community events originally. It could be moved to somewhere more peripheral if it needed additional space the Green area couldn't provide. The Inn would likely end up by the Green too, again as a handy near-central location. If the market moved, the Inn might have its effective facing altered, or simply expand (if space allowed) to provide patron access from all the suitable directions.

The obvious answer is to make one or more really a cockatrice:

[Image from this Monster Fandom Wiki page.]

And use the illusion idea to disguise the fact until someone examines the "right" one closely enough - oops...

Yes, this one's come up a few times on the Forum before - I've mentioned it more than once, I know! - but there isn't a "Resources" topic for elements like this. Might be worth adding one though?

You might want to add a box and maybe a background to the map key here, and move or delete that "50" fathom depth label currently in the key. It looks a little odd to have the green low tide line marker set between the 75 and 50 fathom contours presently, for instance. Might be worth adding a land indicator to the key as well? And perhaps a compass pointer.

I seem to have missed this earlier, and it's been a bit of a battle to get to it tonight - Forum kept redirecting me for about 15-20 seconds, but it seems to have stabilised for the moment. I hope...

Interesting looking map, certainly.

The trees seem a bit overwhelming in places, contrasted with the settlement sizes. I'm not sure if it's as much the transparency issue though with this style; placement is everything to avoid overlaps, and this looks a little messy in places to my eye. Struggling to follow the river lines in places, for instance.

The settlement and ship symbols seem to have ended up on different Sheets, as some are transparent, others not, which also looks odd, as I'm assuming the lack of a key means these variants don't have some particular meaning.

The navigation lines out of Lake Quelimar into the sea also look a bit confusing, unless there's some concealed connection between the two the lines are meant to represent?

Vederit's too close to the northern map border, I think.

Does the darker shading on some of the more southerly mountains have an especial significance?

Interesting progress.

The modern cave views maybe need a bit more work, mostly layout points.

The red numbers are very unclear in places on the plan view, and need adjusting or highlighting in some way.

The solid stone area on the plan between areas 1, 2, 3 & 4 needs amending, as it doesn't have the same wall colouring or shading as the solid rock surrounding the cave, so seems to be an unlabelled feature currently, not part of the rock.

The pair of cross-sections is confusing, and perhaps would benefit from labels to indicate what is being shown on each, or perhaps reduce the pair to just one (if so, the more detailed lower drawing).

Both cross-sections need realigning so as not to obscure their depth label scale. It may be worth running lines across each cross-section from the scale to make it easier to tell what the exact depth is in places further from the scale, and also think of adding a proper horizontal scale bar over the whole drawing. The tiny, currently unlabelled, bar is much too small to be useful, I think. Or perhaps remove the scale-bars entirely, and simply state that the grid squares are five feet each.

The lower border of the drawing needs moving down so as to be not touching the base of the lower cross-section drawing.

Also on the lower cross-section, it may be worth masking those parts of the symbols that currently extend through the floor in places.

There is an old text-file of the fonts available via a standard Win 10 installation plus those fonts that come with CC3+ and its numerous add-ons and in the Annuals, which is intended for use by Atlas map creators, although it hasn't been updated for some time (and I did run into a problem because of a duplicate font name for the "Mayan" font that came in the 2019 Annual, which I already had installed; so the list won't be infallible under such circumstances for others). The text file is available via this post from March 2018.

I have to admit, I now tend to list whatever fonts I've used in my Atlas maps as part of the Submission document for Remy, which makes it easier to spot if there could be a problem (I hope!). Plus it also serves as a reminder to me to check that text file to see what fonts are preferable to use.

Regarding the free monthly content, there's a new page on the PF website about this here. I'm not sure you can access it from any of the PF website links currently, but it was given on Ralf's recent blog posting about the new Orcish symbols.

From that new webpage:

It does seem that only the current month's set is available as a download directly (just July's content is available from my own registration page today, certainly), but I assume that downloading the full CC3+ package would include June's symbols now. That might become problematic if you forget to download the set one month, but perhaps it's smart enough to realise if you haven't yet downloaded a given month's set after the month ends?

If you've not found anything suitable for cherry blossom trees in an overland mapping style from Sue's suggestions, you might need to try a search for icons or mapping icons online to find something suitable in PNG format (or that you could convert to PNG, so you get a transparent background for the artwork), and either use that, or convert it into a CC3+ symbol using CC3+. A couple of quick Google searches using "oriental tree mapping icons" and "cherry blossom mapping icons" came up with quite a number of artwork options, certainly (all vector artwork, however, and often not in PNG format, but I was only doing a very quick chase-round!).

Thanks for that. It was while watching Ralf having to add multiple clicks to get corners on a drawing tool smooth poly I was prompted to ask, but it's something I've run into repeatedly too when adding a smooth poly outside the map border to ensure the edge effects are properly hidden by the screen. Be nice to have a full set of such options with the smooth poly drawing tools, certainly.

That's what we like to see - people solving problems before we can leap in with the wrong explanation! 😁

Glows can be tricky beasts, I've found, which sometimes don't work well with other Effects even when they're on different Sheets on a map, and in variable ways (so they might affect some things on a Sheet but not others; I have no explanation for this...). Always worth experimenting though, to see what works best for what you want.